Page 14 of Things You Save in a Fire

“Not really.”

“How could you say no to her?” he demanded. “She needs you.”

“Can we talk about this later?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter when we talk about it,” my dad said, rolling out his most authoritative voice. “You’re going.”

“I already said no.”

“Change your mind.”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” I said, like he was completely nuts.

“She’s your mother, and she needs you, and you’re going.”

“You’re telling me to leave my job, my apartment, my life—everything?”

“You’re young. You’ll make it work.”

“Ted,” I said. “I don’t want to make it work.”

“That’s not relevant.”

“I barely know her. She’s practically a stranger.”

“Bullshit. That womanmadeyou. She gave you life.”

“Sheleftme. And she left you, too, buddy, by the way!”

“Are you still mad about that?”

“Yes. No. Both.”

“You can’t stay mad forever.”

“Wanna bet?”

“You’ve got to move on.”

“You moved on with a new wife. I can’t get a new mother.”

“True. But your old one is knocking on your door.”

In a way, I’d felt abandoned again when my dad started dating Carol. And I won’t say that Carol was awful, because she wasn’t technically a bad person, though she was a little prissy for my taste.

The point was, my dad and I had been lonely together for years, like it was our thing. Like we were in a special club of two:People Abandoned by Diana Hanwell.But then he found Carol, an administrator at his school—a divorcée, in her pastel culottes and espadrilles—and then,of all things, he decided to marry her. That was that. He couldn’t be in our loneliness club if he wasn’t lonely anymore.

He left.

Or maybe I kicked him out.

But some part of me flat-out refused to leave that club. It was the principle of the thing. In some funny way, I was still standing up for my teenage self.

Because if I didn’t, who would?

Now, here was my dad going over to my mom’s side. “Why are you advocating for her?” I demanded. “She left you! You loved her, and you were good to her, and she cheated on you.”

He knew all this, of course.

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